柔性水下悬停机器人的液气相变驱动及制造

The ocean contains abundant resources, and the world has a major demand for the development of ocean resources. Underwater robots are an important tool to realize the development of marine resources. To solve the disadvantages of the traditional underwater robots, such as high power consumption, high noise, and easy detection of electromechanical characters, inspired by the body shape changes during the stress defense of the puffer, a flexible underwater hovering robot based on liquid-gas phase change driving (hovering robot for short) is designed and manufactured. The base is made of flexible silicone rubber material, and one internal cavity is preset, in which encloses a low-boiling-point driving liquid (3M^TM Novec^TM 7000, boiling point 35℃)is enclosed. Heating the driving liquid causes the liquid-gas phase change, and the saturated vapor pressure acting on the inner cavity wall surface causes volume change of the hovering robot to change its buoyancy. By controlling the driving temperature, the hovering robot dives up and down or stays in fixed depth hovering. Experiments show that the driving temperature is ranged within 50-100℃ as the hovering robot contains 15 mL of self-encapsulating driving liquid, and a maximum buoyancy of about 1.95 times than its own weight can be achieved; when the driving temperature is 53℃, it can hover at fixed depth; within the driving temperature range, the buoyancy measurement error is less than 5%. The flexible underwater hovering robot driven by liquid-gas phase change avoids the traditional electromechanical drive transmission. It has its own working medium, small size and light weight.